Tag Archives: delays

After container ships sped up, why did they just tap on the brakes?

Posted on November 8, 2021 by just2bruce | Leave a comment

This article has great graphs of vessel speed over the last months. It’s easy to see when ships are speeding up and slowing down. The speeds correlate with the spot price of shipping.

Speeding up causes more fuel to be burned, which adds to expenses. It also generates more pollution. Slowing down has been a tactic over past years to reduce pollution generated by ships.

But the long waiting time in ports these days has thrown calculations out of kilter. Now ships need to speed up to keep to their schedules.

Greg Miller, Senior Editor Sunday, November 7, 2021
After container ships sped up, why did they just tap on the brakes?

OECD says shipping freight rates are driving G20 inflation

Posted on October 13, 2021 by just2bruce | 2 comments

In case we didn’t notice it, shipping freight rate increases are the source of significant inflation throughout the 20 most developed countries. If you are complaining about inflation, point here.

The firms involved are passing the price rises on to consumers, resulting in higher prices. We may not be close to the end of the rises, either. We have not seen much to encourage a belief that the supply chain snafus will not continue and be disruptive for at least a year. No one seems to know what to do.

I fear even the choice of very large shippers to lease their own ships and avoid the traditional ocean container lines will not be all that easy. The extra ships will add to port delays, since they must load and unload just where the ocean shippers do. Ports are backed up, and also are running out of space for containers; and of course the driver shortage is preventing containers moving out fast.

Do we have to turn to rationing of scarce resources to get out of this dilemma, to make delivery predictable?